M. Tina Dacin

Partner Selection in Emerging and Developed Market Contexts: Resource-Based and Organizational Learning Perspectives

This study of the international partner selection of firms from emerging (Mexico, Poland, and Romania) and developed (Canada, France, and the United States) markets supports resource-based and organizational learning explanations of such partner selection, a critical factor for success with international strategic alliances. Emerging market firms emphasized financial assets, technical capabilities, intangible assets, and willingness to share expertise in selection of partners more than developed market firms. In contrast, developed market firms tried to leverage their resources through partner selection. In particular, they emphasized unique competencies and local market knowledge and access in their partner selection more than emerging market firms.

Institutional Theory in the Study of Multinational Corporations: A Critique and New Directions

This paper was motivated by the growing interest of scholars of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the institutional perspective. Our review of the literature suggests that international management applications of this perspective have been dominated by a narrow set of neoinstitutional ideas. We develop a set of provocations that challenge the validity of traditional neoinstitutionalism in the context of MNCs. We then offer ideas for more novel theory building in the study of MNCs, based on integrating “old” and “new” institutionalism.

Social Entrepreneurship: A Critique and Future Directions

Work on social entrepreneurship constitutes a field of study that intersects a number of domains, including entrepreneurial studies, social innovation, and nonprofit management. Scholars are beginning to contribute to the development of this new discipline through efforts that attempt to trace the emergence of social entrepreneurship as well as by comparing it to other organizational activities such as conventional entrepreneurship. However, as a nascent field, social entrepreneurship scholars are in the midst of a number of debates involving definitional and conceptual clarity, boundaries of the field, and a struggle to arrive at a set of relevant and meaningful research questions. This paper examines the promise of social entrepreneurship as a domain of inquiry and suggests a number of research areas and research questions for future study.

The Embeddedness of Organizations: Dialogue & Directions

We review research on organizations to highlight prevailing and emerging conceptions for embeddedness. An integrated framework that considers the sources, mechanisms, outcomes, and strategic implications of embeddedness is presented. Also, promising research directions for embeddedness approaches, including cross-level issues (such as collective cognition and nesting), as well as issues related to temporality, networks, and methodology are identified.

UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES IN KOREAN AND U.S. EXECUTIVES’ STRATEGIC ORIENTATIONS

Competitive positioning in a global market requires an understanding of the decision processes and behavioral attributes of executives from different countries. These attributes reflect the executives’ cultural background, the national policies under which they have worked, and their home country’s level of economic development (institutional context). The current research compared strategic decision models of U.S. and Korean executives and the results suggest that criteria employed by the executives from the two countries differ. Differences in institutional context between Korea and the U.S.A. were reflected in the weightings of objective criteria used by the executives. Korean executives emphasized industry attractiveness, sales and market share (because of policies that encourage growth) and U.S. executives emphasized projected demand, discounted cash flow and ROI (because of policies and institutions that focus on profitability). The results suggest the importance of understanding the strategic orientations of international competitors, partners in international strategic alliances and managers of international subsidiaries or divisions.

Efficiency Motives and Normative Forces: Combining Transactions Costs and Institutional Logic

This paper provides a synthesis of transaction cost economics and institutional theory. It reviews each of these approaches and provides suggestions on how these perspectives might be broadened via this synthesis. It presents an illustrative model of organization theorizing that combines relevant aspects of transaction cost theory and institutional theory in order to strengthen the explanatory power of both. The model explores conditions under which one or both theories may be most appropriate in explaining decision behavior, focusing on two important situational factors--the degree of ambiguity surrounding transaction cost analyses and the organization’s temporal survival orientation.

The embeddedness of social entrepreneurship: Understanding variation across local communities

Social enterprise organizations (SEOs) arise from entrepreneurial activities with the aim to achieve social goals. SEOs have been identified as alternative and/or complementary to the actions of governments and international organizations to address poverty and poverty-related social needs. Using a number of illustrative cases, we explore how variation of local institutional mechanisms shapes the local “face of poverty” in different communities and how this relates to variations in the emergence and strategic orientations of SEOs. We develop a model of the productive opportunity space for SEOs as a basis and an inspiration for further scholarly inquiry.

Institutional Arrangements and International Entrepreneurship: The State as Institutional Entrepreneur

We examine the role of the state as entrepreneur and institutional entrepreneur in the Middle East. Using historical event sequencing methodology we seek to understand the rise of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates as a context for international entrepreneurship. We build on ideas at the intersection of international entrepreneurship and institutional theory to develop a set of propositions that enhance our understanding of international entrepreneurship. We provide implications for the management of both global and local legitimacy, resource mobilization, and agency as well as the strategic deployment of an institutional infrastructure to create and enable entrepreneurship.

Standards across borders: crossborder diffusion of the arm's length standard in North America

The arm’s length standard is used by corporate income tax authorities to price international intracorporate transactions and allocate intracorporate income and expenses of multinational enterprises. In this paper, we examine the socio-historical evolution of transfer pricing regulation in North America. We develop a model of crossborder diAusion of standards, using institutional theory and the logic of embeddedness, that focuses on three components of crossborder diAusion: timing, motivation and form. Our model is then applied to the evolution and diAusion of the arm’s length standard within North America from 1917 to the present. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Innovations in Governance: Global Structuring and the Field of Public Exchange-Traded Markets

This volume investigates the relationship between economic globalization and institutions, or global governance, challenging the common assumption that globalization and institutionalization are essentially processes which exclude each other. Instead, the contributors to this book show that globalization is better perceived as a dual process of institutional change at the national level, and institution building at the transnational level. Rich, supporting empirical evidence is provided along with a theoretical conceptualization of the main actors, mechanisms and conditions involved in trickle-up and trickle-down trajectories through which national institutional systems are being transformed and transnational rules emerge.